


The number one rule

by cromarty



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Adoption, Anxiety, Baseball, M/M, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-02-29 15:56:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 5,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18781465
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cromarty/pseuds/cromarty
Summary: Elizabeth, Patrick has learned, is decisive. She has decided to give them her baby.ORPatrick and David adopt, which is a catalyst for exposing Patrick's own brand of anxiety, and how Patrick works through it.





	1. Chapter 1

Patrick is 35, almost exactly twice her age. He thinks of himself at 17, of the girls from their sister school he did charity work with and goaded his friends into dancing with at mixers, of swaying clumsily with Rachel at the Snow Ball. David is 38, he could be her father, if he had been less careful in his past. David looks tense. Her father just looks worried, and tired. He and her mother, also worried, also tired, are both 42. Elizabeth is 17, and she looks defiant, and fierce, and she’s the only one in the room who looks like she knows what she’s doing, like she’s sure of herself. She is 31 weeks pregnant. 

  
  


Elizabeth has purchased skin care products at their store. Patrick thinks, if he remembers correctly, that she is a fan of their peppermint lip balm. She is a good student, according to Jocelyn. She is planning to go to McGill. When her parents were out of town in November, she decided she was ready to sleep with Ethan Williams. She does not regret her decision. Elizabeth, Patrick has learned, is decisive. She has decided to give them her baby. 

  
  


Patrick and David have been married for exactly 14 months. On Monday, Jocelyn called Patrick and asked if they could come by the house after closing the store. He had assumed it was going to be some whole thing, as it so often was, and was completely unprepared for Roland to be out, for Jocelyn to sit them down at the kitchen table and ask, as seriously as he had ever seen her, whether they had talked about having kids. David answered a bit too indignantly for the tone she was setting, of COURSE they had talked about it, but Patrick had put two and two together slightly more quickly and less defensively, and grabbed David’s hand to slow him down. 

 

They had talked about it, pretty extensively, and they had decided that maybe in a year or so, but definitely before David turned 40 and felt too old, they would look into adoption, probably of a toddler. David was convinced they would both be better parents to someone who could already talk and use a toilet. Jocelyn told them about her student, told them she had asked Jocelyn to ask, said she had said if they wanted a baby, she thought Patrick seemed like he would be a good dad when he volunteered in the high school music department, and that she thought David was cool and would keep the baby from ending up a hick. She had done her research, and she was planning to have a semi-closed adoption no matter what they decided, but she thought they would be good at turning out a kid like herself, appreciative of where she came from but a citizen of the wider world. David couldn’t let that comment pass by but Jocelyn assured them that it was verbatim, Elizabeth had written all this down for Jocelyn to present to them, and included several sentences about there being no pressure, she was talking to a regular adoption agency as well, but she thought she’d offer.

  
  


That was Monday. On Wednesday, David woke Patrick up at 5:45 and asked how early he thought they could call Jocelyn to set up the meeting with Elizabeth and her parents. On Thursday, June 25, at 5:47 in the afternoon, Elizabeth solemnly shook each of their hands and said, “Congratulations, you have 9 weeks to baby-proof your house,” and Patrick thought his knees might buckle but he was pretty sure it was mostly from excitement. 


	2. Chapter 2

The adoption practitioner Elizabeth is working with schedules their home study and PRIDE classes as quickly as possible and handles expediting the paperwork, after thoroughly scolding all of them for not following the standard 4-to-6 month timetable. David and Patrick spend all of Thursday night taking turns pacing and writing things on massive lists. On Friday morning when his alarm goes off for his run, Patrick thinks “I may never get another full night’s sleep in my life,” and feels so terrified he shakes David awake to ask if he’s allowed to call his mom. The had decided in the list making to wait until Saturday to tell their families so they had a little bit of time to themselves to digest, but David takes in Patrick’s wild-eyed expression and just mumbles “put her on speaker.”

  
  


Marcy cries, Patrick cries, David cries, Clint, who has been conferenced in because he’s already at work (David had been horrified to learn that he manages a 7-3 shift) also cries. Marcy starts looking at mid-August flight prices while reassuring them of their competence and the joy and how much support they’ll have, and Patrick skips his run and makes David breakfast in bed while David starts adding organic cotton crib mattresses and hand-carved wooden rattles to a registry. The spend almost an hour snuggled in bed with waffles and about 19 tabs of “what I really used from my baby shower registry” articles before Patrick finally drags himself away to go open the store. He gets a lot of texts from David orchestrating an elaborate plan to get all of the Rose family together for lunch without any of them realizing they’ve all been invited and speculating as to why. At 1pm he turns the reins over to Jessie, one of their part-time sales associates, and heads across the street. Alexis smacks David, Johnny tries to hug both of them at the same time, Moira seems to think they have been careless with birth control but Patrick can’t quite be sure that’s what she was implying, and Stevie says something about David being a geriatric parent, but she is definitely tearing up. David takes advantage of the stir they’ve caused to forward everyone they know their registry link, and then posts it on the Rose Apothecary social media accounts as well. 

  
  


David comes back to the store with Patrick and spends the afternoon upselling everyone who comes in to congratulate them, leaning heavily on the implication that they’ll need all the money they can get for the baby. He makes Patrick go out and politely but firmly refuse Roland’s truckload of old baby gear he’s already started unloading in the alley behind the store. Surprisingly, he feels the calmest he’s felt since Monday evening when Roland claps him on the back and says, “Don’t worry about it, Pat, I know Johnny may not be a great dad role model, but if you need any help, you can always call me!” If Jocelyn can parent with one hand tied behind her back in the form of Roland’s help, he and David can definitely be a success.


	3. Chapter 3

At 3:41am on August 31, Patrick is sitting in the home office/nursery on his laptop, going through their checklist again. David had stopped sleeping beyond a doze a few weeks ago and had been prescribed a non-habit-forming sleep aid, so Patrick was able to freak out in the middle of the night pretty regularly without worrying him. He probably should have been getting more sleep before the baby came, but being able to take his time and move methodically through his orderly checklists, preparing himself in the least chaotic way possible for the chaos he knew would inevitably ensue, was the only thing making him feel like he wasn’t going to screw everything up. He and David had opted not to know the baby’s sex, trying to do what they could to relax some gender expectations, and everything piled around him is in soothing neutrals of warm wood and white. He collapses into the glider and rubs his eyes. 

  
  


He startles awake when David slides his hands up his thighs and onto his waist. “Honey,” David whispers, kneeling in front of the glider, “how long have you been in here?”

Patrick rests his hands on David’s shoulders and glances at the clock. “About 3 hours? Sorry, I meant to come back to bed.” David helps him stand and pulls him into a swaying hug. Patrick is about to confess how worried he is that he’ll be bad at this, that he won’t be able to make the money work or that he’ll somehow make their baby as repressed and people pleasing as he had been or that somehow all the work he’s done since he met David to be emotionally honest will either somehow evaporate in the face of this challenge (after all, he is sneaking away in the middle of the night to stress out) or it won’t but it will somehow alienate his kid. Then of course there’s always the possibility that Elizabeth will give birth and change her mind, which she seems sure won’t happen but how many things was he sure of in his own life at 17? Before he even opens his mouth, though, his phone starts vibrating on the desk, and he and David instinctively nearly squeeze each other to death. It’s 5:22am, and the only person who could possibly be calling at this moment is Elizabeth’s dad. They spring apart and Patrick puts the phone on speaker. 

  
  


Alexander says “It’s done, guys! Your daughter is here, she’s 3.6kg and I think she has Emily’s nose!” and David gasp-laughs and asks after Elizabeth and Patrick is crying and as close to David as he can get, soaking the collar of David’s tshirt and staring at the page from David’s notebook taped to the wall with “Rebecca Elizabeth” at the top of the list David has labeled “AFAB.” 

  
  


They finish a circular round of congratulations with Alexander and go collapse into bed after putting a notice up on the website that the store wouldn’t be opening until the afternoon. They still have a month, technically, since Elizabeth can’t sign the consent for 7 days and she has another 21 days after that to revoke her consent, but in 28 days they will be bringing home a baby. Patrick is just about to fall asleep when David whispers into the hollow of his throat. “You don’t have to worry without me. We’ll be great at this, and if we’re not, we should fuck it up together, not alone looking at spreadsheets in the office.” Patrick feels his tears starting again. He whispers back. “I promise I will be better at fighting the instinct to retreat, baby.” David hums against his throat and then murmurs “maybe we’ll put a sign up in the office that says ‘no solo freakouts,’” and Patrick laughs and kisses him and thinks about their daughter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "AFAB" stands for "assigned female at birth."


	4. Chapter 4

When Rebecca is two months old, David wakes up and the sheets next to him are cold. He’s about to get up to check if Patrick fell asleep in the glider again when he sees the baby monitor light up. He pulls it off the nightstand and closer to his ear in time to hear Patrick say, “It’s the number one house rule, baby Bex. Your father is a very smart man, so we should do what he says. You’re not supposed to cry alone in here, I’m not supposed to cry alone in here, nobody is, that’s why it’s on the wall.”

David smiles, picturing the cross-stitch sampler style “No solo freakouts” sign Patrick commissioned and framed for the wall across from the glider. David had meant it as more of a throwaway joke, but Patrick finds it even harder than David does, sometimes, to be vulnerable, so David has fully embraced their new number one house rule.

 

“So the thing you need to understand, though, darling, is that the baby in the movie is literally a king and also a baby,” Patrick is saying. David had complained, early on, that he didn’t know any real lullabies, and Patrick had told him any song sung to a baby to try to get them to sleep counted. David usually relies on a rotation of Mariah, Whitney, and Beyonce. His rendition of “Dreamlover” has become a particular favorite of both Rebecca and Patrick. Patrick seems to sing any song that comes to mind, and David has started plotting to hide a microphone in the nursery to pick up the ‘40s love songs he tends to favor for the 4am feeding. Tonight it sounds like he’s trying to give Rebecca context, but David doesn’t recognize the movie he’s describing. He snuggles back into the blankets as Patrick starts to croon.

 

"Loo loo loo I'll take you dreaming  
Through the rainy night  
To a place behind the raindrops  
Where the stars are bright.  
  
You may not find gold or silver  
But a richer prize  
Waits for you behind the raindrops  
If you'll close your eyes.  
  
Tonight, tonight, when all the world's asleep  
We will tiptoe home with a wondrous star  
A star you can always keep.  
  
And years from now when you go dreaming  
When you're very old  
Though your crown be rich with rubies  
Diamonds set in gold  
None will shine as bright  
As the star we'll find tonight."

 

David is almost asleep again, listening to the soft sounds of Patrick putting Rebecca back down. He jerks a little when Patrick takes the baby monitor out of his hand and slides back into bed, pressing close all the way down David’s side. “You never sing me to sleep, you know,” David murmurs, feeling Patrick smile sleepily against his neck.

“You’ll always be a part of me,” he starts to sing, kissing his way up to David’s ear, “I’m part of you indefinitely.” David giggles, and Patrick shushes him, sliding further on top of David. “Boy, don’t you know you can’t escape me, ooh darling ‘cause you’ll always be my baby,” Patrick loses the rest of the chorus in kissing David.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Patrick sings "[I'll take you dreaming](https://youtu.be/6fteMYl0Dzk)" from The Court Jester and "[Always Be My Baby](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfRNRymrv9k)" by Mariah Carey.
> 
> This is the image that made me start this fic in the first place, but I got very wrapped up in Patrick's less adorable, more human qualities first.


	5. Chapter 5

The problem with the rule is that Patrick sometimes needs the line between his usual level of research and preparedness and freaking out pointed out to him. In November he is reading an article on American football concussions which leads to an article on TBIs in general which leads to an article about the sudden death of the author’s husband and how it was made even more horrible because she was so unprepared she didn’t know about their mortgage payments or his phone passcode or anything, and the next night after the 4am feed he sits in the office listening to Rebecca’s slow breaths and starts collecting all the information he can about the store and their assets and their laptop passwords and the 48 character password to get into his password manager and Rebecca’s paperwork and their passports and reads every checklist he can find about what they need to make wills (why don’t they have wills yet? They have assets and a KID) and also emails the most highly reviewed estate planning service in the region to make an appointment for Tuesday when the store is closed. His alarm goes off in the bedroom and he sets out his newly written list of questions to discuss with David, gets ready for his run, and tries not to beat himself up for dropping the ball. 

 

When he gets back, David’s on the couch with Rebecca, waiting for Patrick to take his usual efficient shower and then feed the baby while David starts his routine. Patrick kisses David’s cheek and Rebecca’s head on the way past as usual, but David snags his waistband to stop him. “I see someone was busy sometime between singing ‘Goodnight sweetheart’ and going for a run,” he says in his quiet early morning voice. Patrick flushes, caught out. “I was just doing a little research, we really need to figure out our wills. I wrote up a list of things for us to decide sometime this week.” David just hummed and gave him a look like he was on to him, but he let Patrick continue to the bedroom after yanking his shorts down a bit and pinching his ass. 

 

While he’s wandering around with the baby carrier strapped to his chest waiting for David to be ready to help him put Rebecca into it, he starts filling in the worksheet he made for himself, and then he’s antsy all day at the store, waiting for the after dinner conversation in which they’ll compare notes on who they want to take Rebecca if they both die or something. He thinks he’s hiding the antsiness in the near continual bouncing he has to do to keep Rebecca asleep on his chest during nap time, but he can feel David watching him. At one point, David comes over, stills him, looks him straight in the eyes and says “You know Rebecca technically has SIX grandparents, right? Nothing is going to happen between now and Tuesday, and even if it did, she’d be fine.” Patrick sighs and leans into him. “Thanks, I know, I just don’t like leaving it undone.” David rolls his eyes slightly, but kisses Patrick’s hairline anyway. 


	6. Chapter 6

It takes David more than a week to realize that Patrick has stopped sleeping past the 4am feeding. He’s not freaking out about anything, he’s just cherishing this precious time listening to his daughter breathe and methodically working through the wills paperwork, and what he’s sort of morbidly titled “the death binder” in his head. David’s more competent than he sometimes pretends, but when Patrick thinks about what would happen to either of them if something happened to the other of them, he starts feeling a sort of tightness just below his collarbone, and making sure they have an organized resource in case of the worst happening eases it, slightly.

 

When he pads into the bedroom to turn off his alarm and get ready for his run as usual, David’s hand shoots out from under the covers to grab his wrist and yank him down onto the bed.

“Patrick, I love you, do not lie to me,” he sort of growls from where his face is still mostly smashed into the pillow. “How many nights this week have you spent in the office?”

Patrick hesitates, but almost immediately surrenders, adjusting himself to lie more comfortably next to David so he can get a soothing (for both of them) hand on the back of David’s neck. 

“Honestly? All of them.” David groans and twists to make more of his face visible.

“I haven’t brought this up because I know I haven’t really made it seem like I had a good experience, but I think you should think about finding a therapist.” Patrick wrinkles his brow, but David continues before he can open his mouth to object. “There’s been a lot of changes in our lives recently and having a baby is stressful, and you deserve to have a third party to talk to. You can’t keep sitting up at night, and you need someone to talk to about how you’re feeling about all of this who’s not me or the trees or our daughter in the middle of the night.”

He’s not wrong, and Patrick has been thinking about it, but…. “I’ll have to find someone who can see me on Tuesdays, and I’ve heard it’s tricky to find someone you’re compatible with, and I don’t _actually_ talk to the trees on my hikes, David.”

David flips himself over so he can hold Patrick snugly against him from head to toe. “Yes, it might be tricky, but you’re good at research and I think it will be worth it.” He’s started rubbing at Patrick’s shoulders, which is the only thing that makes Patrick realize they were actually pretty tense.

“Okay, I’ll start looking today, but it’s Tuesday, and our appointment with the estate planner isn’t until 11, and I think I can skip my run,” he says, dipping his face to David’s neck and settling back in to wait for his daughter to wake up from the comfort of his husband’s arms.

  


In his first session, Dr. Carter asks why he has decided to start seeing a therapist. Patrick tells him that David suggested it, that he never has before, he’s pretty good at handling his emotions on his own —not that there’s anything wrong with people wanting help handling their emotions, it’s just that he’s had a pretty good life, he’s always been capable and pretty successful and he’s so happy now. And maybe he wasn’t really before, growing up, but it wasn’t that bad, he just didn’t always quite feel like he fit, and it took him a long time to figure out he was gay, and maybe he did decide to sort of blow up his life because he really needed a change, but he’s a take charge guy, and that was him taking charge of his happiness.

And now here he is with a husband who makes him so happy he honestly can’t believe it, and a three-month old daughter he’s about to buy a “baby’s first Christmas” ornament for, and his parents are really involved again, and he really can’t complain. Even when it wasn’t great, his life was not that bad.

Dr. Carter lets him talk for about 20 minutes before he winds down, staring down at his hands in his lap where he’s massaging his old bat callouses.

Then Dr. Carter says, “Patrick, it sounds to me like, because you have had an ability to move through life relatively easily and to accomplish the goals you’ve set out to accomplish, you have not really addressed the fact that you were not actually satisfied with your life. Other than in your decision to move away to Schitt’s Creek, of course. Does that sound right?”

Patrick says yes, but again tries to explain that just because he wasn’t happy doesn’t mean it was so bad he needs to talk about it, there wasn’t really a reason he was so unhappy.

Dr. Carter waits until he can catch Patrick’s eye and says, “We don’t need a reason for our emotions, Patrick, they are still valid because we feel them, whether or not we feel like we deserve to or we should.”

 

Patrick feels his mouth drop open and then immediately feels stupid. He’s said nearly the same thing to David any number of times, that it doesn’t matter why he’s upset or whether he should be upset, it just matters that David is upset, and how can Patrick help him feel better, but he has never, not once, actually thought about how that applies to himself.

  


 

The thing is, as he tries to explain to Dr. Carter, Patrick has always been a catcher. He was dumb enough to volunteer to try on the gear in tee ball, and it satisfied the same need that being milk monitor did, plus he looked cool. As he got older liked that he got to stand strong and let runners slam into him as he fiercely blocked the plate. 

For a catcher, the most important thing in the world is protecting your pitcher. Patrick was obsessive about scouting reports. He loved being praised for his framing. He loved being basically the assistant coach, counseling other players on how best to manage the other teams’ batters, and he loved, more than anything, the reliance and trust from his pitchers. He would handle the scouting and the planning and call the game, and all they had to do was not shake him off and trust he’d put his body between them and any batter looking to clear the benches.

 

Dr. Carter knows the basic rules of baseball, but the nuance escapes him. He’s not the most knowledgeable Jays fan, but he’s an excellent clinical psychologist. He asks about “framing” during their third session, curious about a term he hasn’t heard. Patrick does his best to explain that one of a catcher’s greatest skills is catching the ball in a way that makes it look more like a strike than it actually is. It takes subtle, slight movements of your glove, and pitches on the edge of the strike zone, that should really be called out for the outliers they are, suddenly look much closer to down the middle to the umpire.

Dr. Carter lets him talk for almost his whole hour without interruption and manages to get Patrick to talk himself into a startling revelation about how he spent his whole life until Schitt’s Creek cheating his metaphorical glove left or right to make it seem like he fit squarely in the strike zone.

He tries to explain it to David when he picks him up with Rebecca in her spaceship of a stroller. David does not grasp the baseball of it all, but definitely understands the metaphorical sense, and folds him into an embrace right there in the street so he can lightly kiss the corner of Patrick’s eye, where it’s still slightly damp from the cathartic tears he didn’t try to hold back in the session.

 

Dr. Carter approves of their house rule. He manages to guide Patrick into explaining to him that his partnership with David is more equal than a traditional battery, and that what Patrick wants to work on this week is not trusting David to protect Patrick as well, because he already does, but trusting that David does not need Patrick to spare him the worry and research and planning Patrick’s brain is almost constantly doing. Not just no solo freakouts in the middle of the night, but no unconscious screening of the things he thinks he can fix before he needs to even mention them to David, so he doesn’t have to make David worry. Patrick doesn't think that sentiment will fit on a sampler for the wall, but he knows it's what David has really been asking for all along.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, hello, it's been months, but I got stuck with this. Here is a sort of ending.

By the beginning of March, they’ve settled into a routine. Tuesday is the only day the store is closed, and Patrick sees Dr. Carter every other week. David has started video therapy with someone Dr. Carter recommended, which he does at home on the weeks Patrick isn’t at his own therapy sessions.

On those days, Patrick takes Rebecca out to do the weekly grocery shop. She’s a laughing, chubby-cheeked delight, and friends and strangers always stop him to coo over her in the dairy alternative aisle. When Patrick leaves Dr Carter’s David is always there to pick him up, and Patrick is pretty sure he tickles her so she laughs just as he comes out the door. In return, he lets Mrs Sanderson butter her up in the checkout line so that she’s ready to be dumped, squirming with good humor, into David’s lap as soon as they get home, and David can indulge himself in snuggles and smacking, open-mouthed baby kisses while Patrick puts the groceries away.

By the middle of March, Rebecca has started teething, and everything about this little routine is suddenly 100 times harder. She’s uncomfortable all the time, and the grind of handling a hot, unhappy, squirming, screaming baby through every hour of the day is really wearing on them both.

They got lots of suggestions, from their parents (frozen bananas or whiskey, which mother offered which advice should be obvious) and families (Patrick got a text from his cousin that just said: “Three words re: teething: SOPHIE. THE. GIRAFFE.” and then multiple tooth and giraffe emojis) and strangers on the street.

About two weeks into the Great Teething Nightmare, as David likes to call it, Patrick cries in Dr. Carter’s office for a reason other than the teasing out of his past. “I’m just so tired, and David’s so tired, and it is physically painful to hear her cry and not be able to fix it!” he says, finally letting the exhausted tears just pour out of him. “I want to be able to fix something, so I keep trying to clean or do other chores or at least make David laugh, but everything I do upsets him, because he’s so particular about the cleaning and laundry and we’re just both so tired and on edge, and I know that, but it’s killing me to be making them both so unhappy.”

Dr. Carter hands him a tissue and says, “would you like me to play it back?” Sometimes he suggests this, when he thinks Patrick is drawing conclusions not supported by his own words. It surprises Patrick every time, because it’s never when he feels like he’s not making sense. It’s always when he is firm in his understanding of where his feelings are coming from, until he hears the recording. The first time, it made him feel crazy, but now he finds it really useful, even though it’s upsetting still pretty much every time.

He nods, wiping his face, and Dr. Carter clicks back a few minutes on the recording. He listens and then frowns as he hears what Dr. Carter heard. “Okay, I guess it’s not actually me making them unhappy, but I still don’t know how to handle them being so unhappy and not being able to fix it,” he says, crossing his arms.

“What did David say when you told him that?” Dr. Carter asks, pretending very well that he doesn’t know what Patrick is going to say. Patrick just looks away, sheepishly, and crosses his arms tighter. “You’ve expressed, before, Patrick, that you’ve seen a tendency in yourself to isolate and solve problems without David. I think in the case of ‘the Great Teething Nightmare,’ the fact that you can’t fix the cause is a good thing, because it is going to turn you to fixing the symptoms.”

Sometimes Patrick finds it frustrating that he’s been doing this for months and he keeps bumping into the same problems, but at least this is something he knows the answer to, even if he finds it hard to put into practice sometimes.

“Okay, yes, I get it,” he sighs. “My focus for these two weeks is going to be leaning on my teammate for support and trusting he’ll do the same.”

Dr. Carter smiles slightly. “I think, as long as you and David keep turning towards each other instead of away, you’ll get through this, and whatever comes next, and the terrible twos, just fine.”

Patrick’s phone buzzes in his pocket. He’s supposed to turn it off, but he has Do Not Disturb set up so only David’s contact is set to buzz, so it’s never been an issue before.

“I’m sorry, he never texts me during therapy, I have to check it,” he explains, already worried, as Dr. Carter waves an easy hand to dismiss his apology. Patrick opens the text and puts a hand to his mouth, feeling more tears start to spill over.

David, his wonderful, cranky, difficult, so easy to love husband, has sent him a picture of [a mug](https://shop.adamjk.com/collections/all/products/i-love-you-like-mug) inscribed “I love you like I love my coffee — first in the morning/ or last at night/ dark or sweet or both/ right now & later/ & always & constantly.”

“I—” he starts, but Dr. Carter is smiling.

“I think we’re done for the day, Patrick.”

“Thank you, sorry,” Patrick says, already out almost out the door. When he gets to the street he almost crashes into David, standing there tiredly jiggling Rebecca, in his haste to kiss him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> David's mug is designed by [Adam J. Kurtz](https://shop.adamjk.com/).


	8. A missing scene

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A million years ago when I was more actively working on this story I wrote this conversation (inspired by this dumb [website](http://liverampup.com/entertainment/noah-reid-gay-relationship-partner.html)), but it never fit in to the story.

“Well, that’s reductive,” David scoffs from where he’s scrolling through his phone and swaying slightly to keep Rebecca happy behind the cash register.

“What’s reductive?” Patrick is supposed to be restocking the SPF moisturizer but mostly he’s just been watching David rock their daughter in their store and trying to decide if he can sneak a video.

“This article says ‘Evan Lysacek Engaged Status Amid Heavy Gay Talks’ and promises ‘Family Insight!’ and first of all, why does being engaged automatically mean ‘engaged to a woman,’ which he is, and why does ‘engaged to a woman’ automatically discount the ‘heavy gay talks’?”

“Those are important questions, David, I agree, and I have another,” Patrick says, moving closer so he can get his hands on either his husband or his daughter, he’s not picky. “What are ‘heavy gay talks’?”

David smirks up at him and then leans in like he might tell Patrick a secret. “Heavy gay talks are what we do every Tuesday night when I try to get you naked and you decide it’s time for some emotional pillow talk about what we learned about ourselves in therapy.”


End file.
